


Death Defying

by liketogetlost



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:35:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketogetlost/pseuds/liketogetlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is totally and completely the worst idea you have ever had that I have agreed to.” Ned spoke through tense lips, his breath hitching over every other word, as he leaned over Chuck and held his hand mere inches above Chuck's naked stomach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Defying

Charlotte Charles had never been a risk taker. Before her death, she'd been anything but a risk taker, taking as little risks as possible to ensure herself a completely safe and excruciatingly boring life. To take chances on anything was too frightening a concept, and she preferred to criticize and mull over the decisions made by the fictional characters living out their lives in whatever book her nose was stuck in that week. It was something like irony then, when the first big risk she allowed herself to make ended with her less than permanent death.

It was also ironic, or something, that Chuck risked her very life every time her boyfriend stepped within three inches of her. It was this fact that turned Chuck Charles into a bit of a dare devil. For what was a second life without excitement, and for that matter, the reality that it could all be over at any moment.

“This is totally and completely the worst idea you have ever had that I have agreed to.” Ned spoke through tense lips, his breath hitching over every other word, as he leaned over Chuck and held his hand mere inches above Chuck's naked stomach.

She bit her bottom lip, and tried to control the sudden urge to giggle insanely. As her back arched, Ned gasped and lifted his hand higher before snapping it back against his body like a rubber band. “Relax.” Chuck's own breath ghosted across Ned's neck at the word, causing him to shut his eyes and shiver, and she knew her suggestion accomplished nothing but to have the opposite effect she desired.

She was stretched out along the length of Ned's couch, skin protected by absolutely nothing, her flesh melding into the leather and creating a Chuck shaped form in the cushions. Her hair was let loose from the tie she'd had it in before, curls sweeping across the pillow her head lay on, brown swirls of silk against fabric Ned would no doubt be burying his head in later. Ned knelt on the floor in front of her, fully clothed, worry lines creasing his soft features as he tried to ignore how beautiful she was to focus fully on not killing her.

“Please, Ned.” Her voice slicing through the thick quiet in the air, Chuck looked up at Ned through lidded eyes, pleading for him to go on. She felt a sudden warmth between her thighs as she watched him take a deep breath and snake his innocent tongue out along his lips.

It was like he'd gotten his second wind, and he lifted his hand again to hover above Chuck's bare belly, moving it as if he was stroking her for real.

Chuck made a sound in the back of her throat that could only be described as a purr, and stretched herself taut along the couch, her tip toes digging into the soft padding of the arm.

She wasn't insane, at least she didn't see what she was asking for as insane. All she knew is that she was sick of plastic wrap, tired of gloves, bored of watching, and absolutely exhausted of contraptions. She wanted Ned in his purest form, and since she couldn't actually receive his touch, she wanted the next best thing. Lovers asked for much crazier things from their partners than their warmth.

A few more nervous puffs of breath and Ned's hand made it's way up the length of Chuck until it was leveled with her right breast. Chuck tipped her head back and sighed, skin tingling with excitement underneath the heat of Ned's palm.

“Closer.” Another whisper and glance towards Ned. His eyes widened but he didn't speak, letting his hand drop a few more breaths closer to the skin that had to be the softest, smoothest skin he would never be able to feel.

Chuck shut her eyes tight as her heart thumped out a rapid beat inside her chest. She understood then the rush that people got from jumping out of planes above the clouds, or stepping off the side of a bridge with only a long rubber cord wrapped around them to keep them safe. It was the same rush she'd felt when Ned had opened her coffin and smiled down at her, or the rush she got from knowing her mother was alive and almost fully well, the same rush she used to get when she'd swing on the swing set at school as a child and she'd kick her legs until she knew she was swinging too high. She remembered that wave of excitement in her tummy she'd get with each swing back and forth, the danger of falling an oddly sweet idea. It was the same wave she felt now with Ned's skin close, so close, to hers.

This was as close to risking her life as she ever wanted to get. As close to death as she ever wanted to be again. She looked up at Ned through clouded vision, tears in the corners of her eyes not from crying but from clenching her eyes shut so tight through the pleasure she felt. Ned was focused on her breast, and she heard him moan the same moment she felt her nipple harden and rise under his heat.

One cough, one sneeze, from either of them, and she'd be stone cold dead in less than a second. The thought should have disgusted her and scared her, but it thrilled her, made her tense the muscles in her thighs to try and relax some of the pressure in between them. Chuck's hands curled into the crocheted throw that covered the back of the couch, and she felt her nails bite into her own palms, leaving behind crescent moon shapes Ned could trace with his tongue if it wouldn't take her life.

Ned's head fell to one side, as he let some of his control slip, distracted by Chuck's naked form and the response he received from such little effort. Although the effort was not little, not really, and Ned felt beads of sweat collect on his forehead as the room seemed to fill with molten lava. One mishap, one confused nerve causing a twitch of his hand, and she would be gone. He held her very life in his hands, literally. The thought shouldn't make him even harder inside his pants, make him strain against the fabric of his cotton underwear and the stiffness of his jeans, but it did.

Chuck's legs were sliding up and down the length of the couch, and Ned caught her eye with a look that told her to stop. She did, her heart beating even faster, freezing herself in place. She looked down and watched through her eyelashes as Ned followed the curve of her left leg, still bent at the knee, as if he was sliding his palm along the length of it. When he reached the end, his index finger doing a little dance over each of her toes, Chuck sighed and let her thighs fall open to his gaze.

Hands surely pulling out threads from the throw now, she clutched it even harder, determined to not allow herself the relief of her own touch. It was difficult, very difficult, though when she heard Ned mutter under his breath a very Ned-like thing to say.

“More gorgeous than a tray of fresh, ripe strawberries...” She was sure he wasn't even talking to her, really, just wrapped up in her body and his own thoughts. Still, it was the kind of thing only Ned would say, the kind of thing that usually made her want to throw her arms around him and kiss him stupid. The kind of thing that made her fist the crochet in her hands even harder as his palm came within inches of contact to the apex between her legs.

Closed her eyes again and let herself think about what his hands did there when they were safe. How he would tease her with gentle touches before leaving her hanging at the edge of climax. He was the sweetest man in the world, her Ned, but he could be a bastard sometimes, dangling release in front of her like a prize she had to play for. She let herself think about how it would feel for him to touch and tease her with his bare fingers. Slender and long inside her, the sensation of his calloused fingerprints against her skin leaving her dizzy. She could lift her hips right then and feel him, he wouldn't have enough time to pull away. The idea of suicide never seemed more appealing.

Chuck felt more warmth and gasped, opening her eyes to see Ned running both hands above her body like some kind of magician waving a spell over her. He was a magician, in a way, tricking her body into believing it was being touched. Pulling slight of hands above her, making her writhe and moan beneath his magic.

Suddenly his hands left the vicinity of her yearning form and she whined at the loss. But just as quick Ned was leaning over her, his head dipped down in a sort of worshiping pose as he let his breath ghost over Chuck's skin. She felt the hot air cut a path through the goosebumps that had popped up on her flesh, instead leaving behind a thin sheen of perspiration that shone in the orange light of the room.

Ned let himself breath in and out all along Chuck's form, mumbling different disjointed sentences along the way. At her neck he said “Would bite, lick the pain away...”, to her stomach he spoke “...so soft, bet it's so soft...”, whispered to the outside of her thigh “...grip you, wrap them around my waist...”. Ned having a private conversation with each part of her body, receiving answers through tensing muscles and twitching nerves.

Chuck watched Ned's usually tense face relax and his eyes roll about in his head with each new breath of her. Watched his thick lashes flit open and closed and kiss against his cheeks as he drank her in, his tongue licking his lips every other moment as if he was salivating over the thought of licking her. Tasting her through her smell, and touching her with each exhale of his lungs, they both felt the room constrict in on itself until only the space between their bodies existed. When she felt him gasp against the most private part of her, heard him whisper a jumbled chorus of “My tongue... taste sweeter than syrup...”, Chuck felt that rush again. The rush of life, of death. She knew what both of them felt like, the only girl in the world who could say that. The rush of love and letting herself be loved. The rush that told her the man who had given her life could take it away, that a simple touch from him could leave her a cold and empty shell on his big, warm couch. She was swinging too high, too close to the sky, and she could fall at any moment. Wave after wave of excitement pooled in her belly until she couldn't take it any longer. She was sure then, more sure about this one fact than she'd ever been about anything else, that when she died again she wanted the cause of death to be Ned's kiss on her lips.

Ned breathed life once more across her warm wetness and Charlotte Charles arched her back and moaned towards the heavens as she came at the thought of dying by her lovers touch.


End file.
